Willem Kalf

Willem Kalf is a Dutch painter, born November 3, 1619 in Rotterdam and died July 31, 1693 (73 years) in Amsterdam.

He is one of the greatest painters of still life of his time. He worked in Paris between 1642 and 1646. He returned to the Netherlands and first lived in Hoorn, then moved in 1653 to Amsterdam. The quality of his work is to compare to Johannes Vermeer's (1632-1675) for the smoothness of rendered material.

Luxury objects, such as the ornate Mannerist ewer, steeple cup, and elegant glass vessels, are carefully arranged on a table in this Dutch still life. An open pomegranate and a bowl of fruit rest on white drapery. To the right, a lemon and three olives are reflected in a silver plate that rests precariously on the table's edge. Behind this, a platter...

Set in a dark niche are several valuable objects, including an elegantly embossed silver ewer, a glass in a gilt holder, and a Chinese porcelain bowl containing citrus fruit. The light shimmers on the silver and gold objects with all the colours of the rainbow, picking out the grotesque figures on the surface of the metal. Kalf’s mastery of illumination...

The drinking-horn in this still life was made of a single buffalo horn set into a silver mount which features Saint Sebastian, patron saint of archers, who was bound to a tree as a target for two Roman soldiers. It dates from 1565 and is kept today in the Amsterdam Historisch Museum. The horn suggests that the painting was probably commissioned by a...